A novel of twists and surprises

Self-Efficacy
Tool

Self-efficacy tools
provides an indication of the extent to which students believe
that they 'can make a difference' in situations that confront
them in higher education and life more generally. This is
known as self-efficacy.

The only tool of this
sort currently available is one designed for ESECT by Professors
Peter Knight and Mantz Yorke. It is a questionnaire to aid
reflection on self-efficacy and is described below.

ESECT self-efficacy questionnaire

A component of employability
is self-belief that one can affect situations through one's
actions. The underlying principle of the self-efficacy approach
is that feedback to students should seek to enhance this.

Evidence from pilot work
indicates that there is a fairly sizeable minority of students
whose self-efficacy could possibly be enhanced. Well-designed
curricula can help students, in general, to show greater
self-efficacy.

The self-efficacy questionnaire (SEQ) can be used as an individually-focused
activity, with the intention of developing individual students' self-knowledge.
It can also be used as a group instrument for the same purposes, though in
this case the feedback will be general rather than individually-focused. Since
care needs to be taken with the ethical issues that bear on any questionnaire
activity. For this reason, the use of the questionnaire as a group activity
(in which responses can be anonymous) may be preferred.

Please note that SEQ does not provide a 'score' in the manner of an IQ test.

The original site with an interactive version of the tool is no longer available.